Poker Quiz Question #51

Q#51: You're in a $50/$100 NL 4-handed cash game. Everyone has $50,000 stacks. You are a tight-aggressive mid-stakes pro taking a shot at the big game. You have your entire bankroll on the table. You're on the button with A♣-9♣. You raise to $500 and the expert pro player (one of the best players in New York, and who is very tricky and aggressive) in the big blind calls. Flop is A♠-9♠-8♣. The BB checks and you bet $2,000. He thinks and calls. The turn is 9♦. He checks, you check behind. The river is 2♠.

He leads for $15,000 into the $5,000 pot. You have $49,000 left. You think he has rivered the flush. What should you do? (Pretend you don't know what he actually has if you've seen the movie.)

• Call
• Raise All-in
• Fold

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A#51: Reads: Hmmmm.... When I first read this question, I was a little confused (and yes, I've seen the movie, but I'm trying hard to pretend I haven't). Specifically, what confused me was the statement "you think he has rivered the flush." If this is truly your read, then you've got him crushed with your boat, so the only question is whether to raise less than all-in, or jam, right?

Well, no, not so fast. We'll get to the whole issue of bankroll management (BRM) in a moment, but first we need to figure out whether a flush actually makes sense or not. He was getting just 1.5:1 on the flop in pot odds, which means he probably was not chasing a vanilla flush draw. But yet he still calls. And then on the river, if he just has the flush, he has to realize that the board paired. So why risk chasing us off our weaker hands with such a big overbet, but commit himself if we have him beat? Something smells fishy with the flush draw idea.

There are obviously other hands besides flushes in the villain's range, such as lower full houses. All of these we beat. There is one specific hand that beats us, however, which of course is A-A. Now, 99% of players would not call with rockets OOP preflop heads-up, nor would they slow play it this soft on all the streets after flopping top set, nor would they lead so big on the river.... ah, but this is Teddy KGB, er, I mean an "expert pro player (one of the best players in New York, and who is very tricky and aggressive)" that we're talking about. He knows that you know that he knows... and so on. He obviously sees that the board has paired and that the river front-door flushed the board. He has absolutely put you on a range of hands, and is factoring that into how he's playing his own hand. He also is certainly aware that you know this, and knows that you very well might think he has rivered the flush, yet he still overbets on fifth street. And he knows that you know that he knows this. And so on...

The bottom line is he's most likely holding something like 99, 88, JsTs, and maybe even JsQs or 89s. He also might have AA. He might even have total air, because he knows you have your entire life savings on the table and have to be worried about losing it all.

Estimate: We're ahead of almost all of his range. Only one hand beats us. We're not pot committed.

Decide: We've got a ton of value. If this were a smaller ring game, where my entire bankroll wasn't involved, I'd move all-in for sure..... ah, but we've ignored BRM so far in our considerations. Said another way: we're gambling with our entire life on this hand. If we lose, we're done with poker. Kaput. Fini. We'll be driving Knish's truck and forced to grind our way through law school. We won't be playing poker ever again. The (admittedly gorgeous) Gretchen Mol will have us by the balls, and we'll be firmly on the path to 9-to-5 drudgery, a white picket fence, kids...

...but what is the possibility that Teddy has the pocket rockets? Its pretty small, right?

...ah, it may be small, but it is finite. And it's just the type of hand that he might play this way if we were capable of slowing down and thinking.

In a sense, if we lose this hand, it's just a cooler.... but our life savings are on the line, so the ramifications of being coolered are HUGE.

To quote the fictional hero in this hand, Mike McDermott states, "I want him to think that I am pondering a call, but all I'm really thinkin' about is Vegas and the fuckin' Mirage." What he should have been thinking about instead was his f***in' bankroll...

I say that even though we have tons of value, we're gonna be cautious and put ourselves on a showdown line that we will probably win.

Implement: just call.

Answer: Call

All-in for now...
-Bug

Poker Quiz Question #50

Q#50: You're in a high-stakes $25/$50 NL cash game with $5000 stacks. You have a tight image. An unknown player UTG raises to $200. A skilled, LAg player in MP calls, and you call in the cut-off with 6♥-6♣. The flop is J♣-2♦-6♠. The UTG player bets $400, and the MP player calls. You raise to $1400, the UTG player folds, and the MP player reraises you to $3400. Which play is best:

• Fold
• All-in

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A#50: My gut says shove all-in, but let's do the REDi dance first and see what she says....

Reads: The UTG player folds prior to us making our decision, so you might think he's irrelevant. Well, not quite; his range does affect (combinatorically) the range of the MP villain, so we probably should put him on a range. He raises to 4x UTG, so his range is probably pretty tight. Call it 88-AA, AK+, and AQs. When he cbets on the dry J♣-2♦-6♠ flop and then folds to our reraise, we can assume he had something like overcards or the smaller end of his pair range. Call it 88-99, AQ and possibly AK.

So why is this UTG range important? Because it makes it less likely that the MP villain has these cards in his range. Further, when the LAg villain smooths preflop in MP, we can probably rule out hands like TT-AA, and AJs+, because a LAg would probably reraise from the middle of the field with those hands. Therefore, we can put him on hands like 22-77, maybe 88-99, and things like big suited connectors.

The weird call-reraise line on the flop is odd from the LAg. It's possible he's either bluffing, semi-bluffing, or hit a big hand. There are no straights or flush draws on the board. We've mostly ruled out the JJ hand from his range, but there is a slim possibility he has the fishhooks in his range. Two pair is unlikely, as he's not going to play hands like J-2, J-6, or 6-2. So this leaves 22, X-Js, type hands, and maybe some underpair bluffs.

Estimate: We crush the villain's range. Also, there is $4,075 in the pot, and you have $3,400 behind when the MP player shoves. Our current SPR is therefore $3400/$4075 = 0.8.

Decide: We're swimming in value, and SPR says we're fully pot committed.

Implement: Of the the two action choices in the problem statement, All-in is the only one that makes sense when on a Value line and committed.

Answer: All-in

All-in for now...
-Bug

Trying Another Approach...

I have been in a email discussion recently with a friend about poker quiz question #48, in which I said that the correct answer was to fold AKo preflop. My friend thinks that calling is a better option. We've gone back and forth a bit, but neither seems to be making any headway with the other. Don't worry, I won't get into a rehash of our debate here, nor will I repeat my original long-winded analysis of the hand (you can read it at this link here if you want). Instead, I'd like try another approach to arrive at a logical decision in the hand. In my last blog post, I showed a basic flowchart to help simplify poker decisions. Here it is again:

So I woke up this morning and figured, "what the heck?" Why not give this a try with Q#48 and see where it leads:

We've seen a raise and then a re-raise from two TAgs. The action is to us and we've been bet into. So we choose the YES path in the flowchart. This leads us to:

This one is a little tricky, and it depends entirely on the range we assign our opponents. Heads-up against TAg #1's range, we're ahead. But against the heads-up 3bet range we assigned TAg#2, our equity is only 45% to his 55%. And against both players, our equity is just 30%. So, by definition, our hand is not likely the best. In our email exchange, my friend actually assigned the range of TT-QQ to TAg#2, and against this range, our AK is crushed even further at just 28% to the villain's 72%. Therefore we take the NO fork in the road. This leads to:

Again, if our equity is 30% against the assigned ranges, but we're getting 33% to call (assuming we don't get reraised by TAg#1), the math says we're not even break-even by calling. The situation is worse if we assign my friend's TT-QQ range. Therefore the correct path to take here is again NO. This leads us to:

I believe the answer here is also clearly no. Why? Well, it goes back to the ranges we put on our opponents. For example, if TAg#2 has 99-QQ and an Ace or King hits on the flop, he's not going to pay us off. If he has AA or KK, we're in an RIO situation. If he has AQ we will get paid off only if an Ace hits, but not if a King hits. If he has AK, we're chopping. In other words, we have essentially no implied odds against this guy. The same type of analysis can be applied to TAg#1. Therefore we have to take the NO path again, which leads us to:

Against TAg#1, you might argue that you have decent fold equity, but there are two opponents involved. I.e., we still have to get past TAg#2. Given his range and the fact that he knows we'll be OOP in the hand, we're probably only getting him to fold out a small part of his range, and in fact it will be those hands that we don't want him to fold. The rest of his range (that's currently beating us) he's either calling or 5betting with. Therefore we take the NO path one again, which leads to:

Quod erat demonstrandum.
All-in for now...
-Bug

Poker Quiz Question #48

Q#48: You're in a 9-handed $5/10 NL cash game. Everyone has $1500 stacks. A TAg MP player open-raises to $40. Another TAg player on the button RR's to $140. You're in the big blind with Ah-Kc. Your image is TAg, but you were recently caught bluffing. What should you do?

1. Fold
2. Call
3. Re-raise
4. Shove all-in

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A#48: And now back to Q#48, in which you're in a 9-handed $5/10 NL cash game. Everyone has $1500 stacks. A TAg MP player open-raises to $40. Another TAg player on the button RR's to $140. You're in the big blind with A♥-K♣. Your image is TAg, but you were recently caught bluffing. What should you do? Fold, Call, Re-raise, or Shove all-in?

Interesting hand. My gut reaction is to re-raise (either 2.5x or all-in), but I'm also leaning toward a fold. Sounds weird doesn't it? RR seems reasonable.... but fold? With an offsuit big slick? It's the 4th or 5th strongest starting hand? Really? Yeah, really.

Anyway, I don't think calling is smart, as the best that can happen is that TAg #1 calls behind and I see a multiway pot OOP with a hand that plays best heads-up. This leaves either RRing or Folding. Hmmm.... Let's see what REDi tells us.

Reads: 

• TAg #1: Without any other info, a TAg open raising in MP in a 9-handed game generally means a PFR of around 15% or so. I'm thinking essentially all pocket pairs and nearly all broadways (with the exception of some of the weaker unsuited broadway cards). Call it: 22+,ATs+,KTs+,QTs+,JTs,ATo+,KJo+,QJo
• TAg #2: The second TAg repops to $140. We will assume he has put the first TAg on the same range as us. He's reraising, so he's either trying to isolate and/or trying to build value. With only the blinds left to act, I'm going to lean toward the latter. Typically 3bet ranges for TAgs run around 6-7%, but that number is an average against all opponents. Against another TAg, I'm going to drop TAg#2's PFR down to 4% or so. Call it: 99+,AQs+,AKo

Estimate:

• Hand Equity: Hot-and-cold against these two ranges, our AKo has a tad over 30% equity. TAg #1's equity is close to ours at 27.3%, and TAg#2's equity is 42.3%. In other words, our equity is just so-so if we're multiway. Heads-up against TAg#1 (an unlikely scenario), we're a 57:43 favorite. Heads-up against TAg#2, however, the tables are turned and we're the 44:56 dog. 
• Fold Equity: Normally, I'd say we have decent FE against TAg#1 (because of his range, and the strength we'd project by 4betting here) but we've been caught bluffing recently, so our image isn't very good. Our FE against TAg #2 is not great either, simply given his hand range.
• SPR: If we call or reraise to anything but all-in, we have to consider whether we get ourselves pot committed or not. The standard way to estimate this is via our stack-to-pot (SPR) ratio, which is just our assumed effective stack size on the flop, divided by the pot size on the flop. 
• Reraise. If we RR to, say, 2.5x and (miraculously) just get called by the other two players, the pot would be around (2.5 x $140) x 3 = $1050. The effective stack size would then be $1500 - (2.5 x $140) = $1150. Therefore the SPR would be 1150/1050 = 1.1.
• Call. If we call (and TAg #1 doesn't 4bet), the pot will be (3 x $140) = 420, and the effective stack size will be $1500 - $140 = $1360. Our SPR would then be 1360/420 = 3.2.

Decide: 

• Our RR SPR reads total commitment, so RRs to anything less than all-in is silly. 
• If we RR all-in, and get called by both players, our equity is less than the 33% needed to break even. If we RR all-in and get called only by TAg#2, we're a dog in the hand. In other words, if only one of these guys call, they're probably going to do so with only big pairs and maybe AKs that have us beaten pretty squarely.
• Calling is even worse, as we'll be OOP with an SPR that also says we're committed. Unless we hit the flop really hard we won't know where we're at, but the SPR says we should get it in. 
• I think this all implies pretty strongly that we're on a fold line.

Implement: Muck, and then pay attention to what kinds of hands either player turns over if it goes to showdown.

Answer: Fold

All-in for now...
-Bug

Poker Quiz Question #44

Q#44: You're in a $5/$10 NL cash game. Everyone has $1000 stacks. It's a 6-handed table. You are in MP with AhKh. A loose-aggressive player UTG raises to $40. You re-raise to $130, and he calls. The flop is 3h-4h-8c. He checks and you bet $185 in the $265 pot. He check-raises all-in. What should you do?

1. Call
2. Fold

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A#44: This question is a classic pot-odds/EV question, and really boils down to your equity in the hand, which in turn boils down to the range you put your opponent on. In other words: REDi.

Reads: A LAG in a six-max game is opening pretty wide UTG. Something like any pair and any two broadway cards. When he flats your MP 3bet, however, we can eliminate some of this range. For example, he's probably 4betting QQ-AA, AKs, AKo, and maybe even AQs. If we take these out his initial range, we're left with JJ-22,AJs-ATs,KTs+,QTs+,JTs,AQo-ATo,KTo+,QTo+,JTo

Now, the question is, can we narrow it any further given his check-raise on the 3h-4h-8c flop? Well, this strongly depends on his individual traits and tendencies. Is he trappy? What kinds of hands is he putting us on? And so on. Unfortunately, we're not given any of this information, so we have to assume he's an ABC LAg. Said another way, he's X/R'ing us with some kind of equity, and doesn't have complete air. Let's narrow our read by keeping all the previous pairs (TT-22), and suited overcards from the previous range. Call it: JJ-22,QhJh,QhTh,JhTh (Note that any of the previous range that included an A or a K is removed because we hold those heart blockers in our own hand.)

Estimate: Against this range on this flop, our equity is almost exactly 50%. The pot is $1320, and it's $685 to you to call. Our EV here is: [(50%)($1320) - (50%)($685)] = +$317.50.

Decide: This is a significantly plus EV call, therefore we're on a Value line.

Implement: Call.

Answer: Call.

The main thing to take away here is that it's all about your read on the other player. Once you've placed your opponent on a preflop range, you then work to narrow that range based on logically dissecting his actions relative to yours and the board texture. Once you've done that, the rest is actually fairly easy to make the correct decision.

All-in for now...
-Bug